Laugenbrötchen and German Food Week

I'm starting off a German food week, which I unofficially call the “Novemberfest”, as I've been making many of my favourite German dishes lately. Germans have many suitable dishes especially for this season, so I thought that this is a perfect time to share some of them with you. All my dishes will be of course vegetarian, but they will even be mostly vegan or very easy to veganise. I hope you'll be following this special week.

I lived nearly ten years in Cologne, Germany, where I studied at the university. Students don't have such a great budget for eating out, but I got well acquainted with many German dishes during that time, including some excellent traditional homecooking and baking. I moved from Germany to the UK in 2007, so I've been away for quite a while notwithstanding a few visits. This year I was lucky enough to be able to travel twice to Cologne on business. Then I could go to my old doorstep and quarter and also eat some local food.

The first recipe in this German food week is for Laugenbrötchen aka pretzel rolls. I just love the flavour of pretzel rolls, and they are nice with just a little butter and cheese. You can make a more premium version with tomato and mozzarella as well. If you're a regular reader, you might already know how I like baking different savoury rolls. I haven't made pretzel rolls for a long while, but making them now again reminded me of their goodness.

I have already published a recipe for Laugenbrötchen on my blog, so I will just link the recipe here, if you want to have a look at the details.

Do you have any vegetarian or vegan German food favourites?

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog

Olive rolls

How has your week been? It has been another busy one for me, but luckily it's Saturday now. I haven't been at home much this week, and I feel like I haven't slept much, but now it's time to relax. The weather seems pleasant, warm but not too hot, so we will be going to town for lunch soon.

I still haven't managed to bake any lovely berry tarts or such this summer, but I've baked a lot of different kind of rolls. This is a recipe for olive rolls that are always quite popular in our household. They are easy to make and are just lovely freshly as breakfast.

Olive rolls

Ingredients

200 g wheat flour

200 g spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1-2 tsp sea salt

250 ml lukewarm water

4-5 tbsp olive oil

1 cup green olives

Sunflower seeds

Method

Mix the flours, dry yeast, water, olive oil and salt and knead to a dough.

Carefully fold the olives into the dough, and let it rise under a teatowel for about one hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 250 C.

Shape rolls from the dough, put some sunflower seeds on the top (and the bottom, if you wish), and bake for about 10-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Spelt rolls

I made once again my regular spelt rolls, which I make in slight variations almost every week. This time I added some linseeds, oat flakes and sesame seeds to the rolls and even remembered to write the ingredient amounts down. Normally I just throw things in, as I know better by the feeling of the dough how much flour for example needs to be added.

Freshly baked rolls are always so nice to have, very tasty and also economical. These ones are also very easy and don't need any special attention. 

Spelt rolls – Recipe for about 8 rolls

Ingredients

3 cups spelt flour

2 tbsp dry yeast

2 tsp salt

2 tbsp linseeds

½ cup oat flakes

2 tbsp sesame seeds

300 ml lukewarm water

3 tbsp olive oil

Method

Combine the spelt flour, dry yeast and salt ingredients.

Soak the linseeds, oat flakes and sesame seeds briefly in the lukewarm water and then pour the whole contents to the dry ingredients.

Also add the olive oil and knead.

Let the dough rise for about one hour.

Shape rolls from the dough.

Bake the rolls at 250 C for about 15 minutes until done.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste

This Butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi is such a good one to try. I simply had to make it once I saw the recipe in the Guardian. It looked so good and there can never be enough good dip and paste ideas. In that article there are also a few other good dip recipes, you should definitely have a look!

This plateful consists of two parts, a creamy garlicky butterbean hummus and a paste made from roasted peppers, chillies and walnuts. Hummus is always so good and it's nice to use different pulses to make it. I also love it when peppers are roasted until soggy with black skins. The walnuts just completed this plate.

It was such a good combination and I served it with buttery homemade spelt garlic rolls. This was just the perfect summer spread.

Your VegHog

Potato spelt rolls

I rarely leave any potatoes to spare, but here's a roll recipe for just those occassions when too many potatoes have been roasted. Of course the potatoes can also be roasted especially for these spelt rolls. I really like potatoes in different kind of breads and this is just one of my basic roll recipes, so easy to make and very economical and tasty.

Recipe for 10 rolls

Ingredients

6 roasted new potatoes

25 g butter

200 ml lukewarm water

1 tbsp dry yeast

300 g spelt flour

1 tsp salt

Method

Mash the potatoes and melt the butter.

Add the yeast, salt, water and butter to the potatoes and mix.

Gradually add the flour and knead.

Let rise under a teatowel for about one hour.

Shape rolls from the dough.

Bake at 250 C for about 15 minutes.

Enjoy warm or later on once cooled.

I want to share with this rolls recipe with Credit Crunch Munch hosted by Lancashire Food in July and co-hosted by Fab Food 4 All and Fuss Free Flavours, as this is quite a cunning way using a few left-over roast potatoes. All other ingredients in this recipe are basic and cheap as well. It really pays off baking your own bread and it's so wonderful to have fresh bread!

Your VegHog

Lambic rolls

I often make spelt rolls with cider, as it adds a certain fluffiness and a hint of lovely flavour to the rolls, but now I decided to use lambic beer for these rolls. I kept the rolls simple otherwise just wanting to keep the beer the star of the show. I really adore lambic beers with their sour taste. Lambic is a Belgian style of beer, where wild yeasts have been used for the fermenting, creating this sour taste.

The rolls were very nice and there was a noticeable lambic flavour in them. This recipe made six smallish but hearty rolls.

Ingredients

200 ml lambic beer

300 g spelt flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp dry yeast

½ cup stoneground oats

1 tbsp olive oil

Method

Mix the flour, salt and dry yeast in a bowl.

Gently heat the beer until lukewarm in a small pan.

Add the oats to the beer and then add them to the flour mix.

Knead to a dough, add some good quality olive oil to make the kneading easier. You can also add either more beer, lukewarm water or flour, if the texture isn't quite right.

Let the dough rise under a teatowel for about one hour.

Shape rolls from the dough and bake them at 250 C for about 15 minutes or until crispy on the surface and fully baked through.

These rolls are best enjoyed fresh, but they are also fine the next day.

Your VegHog

Spelt rolls

Thank you so much everyone for your comments, likes, tweets to The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week so far! I'm still trying to keep the theme week up throughout the weekend, so there should be couple of more cheap eat recipes.

Baking your own bread is always quite an economical choice, as the few ingredients needed tend to be on the cheaper side, and I do this regularly. I very often make this kind of spelt rolls in slight variations. I chose a fairly basic version for this post, yet featuring the sunflower seed bottom. I got that idea from German bakeries that offer very seedy rolls with a similar bottom part. Good other cheap additions to these rolls would be for example grated carrot and oat flakes.

This recipe makes 6-8 rolls.

Ingredients

400 g spelt flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp dry yeast

2 tbsp sesame seeds

250 ml lukewarm water

2 tbsp olive oil

6 tbsp sunflower seeds

2 tsp poppy seeds

Method

Mix the dry ingredients together followed by the water and olive oil. There's no need to knead much, just make an even dough and let it rise for at least 30 minutes.

Shape rolls from the dough and tip the bottom onto a pile of sunflower seeds. Then sprinkle poppy seeds on the top.

Bake the rolls at 250 C for about 10 minutes.

Enjoy with butter and cheese. That is my preferred combination.

Your VegHog

Spelt, cider and seed rolls

Is there a better way to start a day than with freshly baked healthy rolls? I think not! I made these lovely rolls, but didn't write down the ingredient amounts. I'm very sorry about that, but they were so good that I'm going to bake them soon again and then post the full recipe here.

The main ingredients of the dough were spelt flour, in dry cider soaked oat flakes and sunflower seeds. This mix made very sturdy and filling rolls. They were so great with some butter and cheese.

Here are couple of my older similar recipes: Spelt and cider rolls & Spelt flake and cider rolls 

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

Watercress rolls

Watercress is in season at the moment and I like adding it to salads, but now I made something slightly different with it. I baked spelt rolls with added watercress and they turned out to be quite good. I spontaneously invented this recipe, as I wanted to eat some rolls and at the same didn't want the excess watercress go to waste.

I also want to share this recipe with the Eat Your Greens vegetarian cooking challenge involving green vegetables. This challenge is hosted by Shaheen from the A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table and I thought that a watercress recipe could be a suitable one for April. 

Here is how I made my Watercress rolls:

Ingredients

250 g spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

100 g spelt flakes

200 ml lukewarm water

1 tbsp olive oil

60 g watercress

Poppy seeds for the top

Method

Soak the spelt flakes in the lukewarm water for a couple of minutes.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Add the water with the spelt flakes to the dry ingredients.

Mix and knead to an even dough and also add the olive oil.

Then add the watercress (larger stalks removed).

Knead some more and let the dough rise in a bowl covered with a tea towel for about one hour.

Shape rolls of the dough and sprinkle some poppy seeds on the top.

Bake them at 220C for about 10-15 minutes until crispy and golden brown.

The rolls are at their best when fresh, but can still be consumed a day or two after the baking.

Your VegHog

Garlic and basil rolls

You already got a sneak preview to these rolls posing on the side of my Alphabet soup, and now the recipe for them will be revealed. I got the recipe from Valio's webpage here and it's developed by Riikka from Vatsasekaisin Kilinkolin, a Finnish food blog. I'm posting below my own only slightly altered version. 

The dough may seem too soft for shaping rolls, but if you're only able to roll it at that texture on a floured surface, the rolls become wonderfully soft and fluffy. First I was skeptical and wanted to add more flour, but I'm glad I didn't. However I used a slightly different rolling technique to the original. Mine might have not been as pretty, but they were so tasty that I don't care!

This recipe makes about 14 rolls.

Ingredients

250 ml milk

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 + 1 egg

1 tbsp honey

½ tsp salt

5 dl wheat flour

50 g + 50 g garlic butter

Bunch of fresh basil

Method

Mix the yeast into lukewarm milk. Add one of the eggs, honey, salt and the half of the flour and mix. Add the rest of the flour and keep kneading for about 20 minutes by hand or 10 minutes with a machine. It is a long time, but worth it. Add 50 g of the melted garlic butter towards the end of the kneading. Cover the dough with a tea towel and let it rise for about one hour.

Place the dough on a floured surface and roll it into a sheet of about 35 x 35 cm. Spread the other half of the garlic butter (not melted, only soft so it's better spreadable) on the dough and sprinkle the chopped basil onto it. Roll the dough into a long firm log, swiss roll style, and cut roll sized pieces from it. Let these rise on a baking tray under a tea towel for about 30 minutes. 

Brush the rolls with a beaten egg and bake them at 220C for about 12 minutes or until the rolls are fully baked.

Enjoy with salads, soups, pasta dishes. They are at their best when fresh from the oven.

Your VegHog

Seed, spelt and sea buckthorn rolls

This is the type of roll that I quickly put together in the evenings when I realise that I have nothing prepared for breakfast for the next day, or I sometimes make them for a weekend breakfast when there's time for baking in the morning. These are really easy and quick rolls and healthy too. Of course the rising time for the dough delays the whole process a little, but today I didn't mind that. I just had the loveliest breakfast moment eating these rolls freshly baked.

The sea buckthorn powder adds a certain hint of sharpness into the background flavour. And of course sea buckthorn is an extremely healthy berry, so I try to slip this powder into many meals, especially into breakfast bowls. One really excellent source for healthy berry powders are Arctic Power Berries. Have a look at their story and vision on their webpage. As a fellow Finn I need to promote this page a little bit, as the girls are doing an excellent job spreading Finnish berry powders to a wider audience. They ship their products into many countries and through that are also doing me a huge favour, because now I don't have to carry those powders with me from Finland anymore and can conveniently order them to my home in England instead. 

Now to the recipe, which makes about 8 small vegan rolls.

Ingredients

250 g spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tbsp sea buckthorn powder

50 g mixed seeds (for example pumpkin, sunflower, sesame)

200 ml lukewarm water

1 tbsp olive oil

Poppy seeds for the top

Method

Mix the flour, dry yeast, sea buckthorn powder and the mixed seeds in a bowl. Then add the lukewarm water and knead. Once the dough is smooth, also add the olive oil and knead a little more. Cover it and let rise for about one hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 220 C. Shape rolls from the dough and sprinkle some poppy seeds on the top. Then bake them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes until the rolls are golden brown.

All done! Have a brilliant weekend!

Your VegHog

Spelt and cider rolls

I have made these cider rolls a few times before, but never posted the recipe. Now I thought that these could also be nice for the Christmas season. How about serving them to your Christmas guests?

I used the organic Black Fox cider for these rolls, but any dry British style cider will work well in this recipe and will add a lovely flavour. I have previously posted a review of the Black Fox cider here. 

And here's now my cider roll recipe, powered by spelt flour, of course. If you don't have any spelt flour, don't hesitate to use wheat flour as it also works in these. I got 10 medium sized rolls with this recipe.

Ingredients

3 dl dry cider

7 dl spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

25 g butter

Method

Melt the butter and set it to side.

Heat the cider lukewarm and dissolve the dry yeast to the cider.

Add the flour, salt and sugar and mix it all into an even dough. You can mix the dough with a spatula as it is quite soft, so no hand kneading needed.

Add the melted butter and mix a little more.

Let the dough rise covered for about one hour at room temperature.

Shape rolls from the dough and let them rise for further 30 minutes on a baking tray.

Pre-heat the oven to 220C.

Brush the surfaces of the rolls with water and bake them for about 10-15 minutes. You can also add various seeds or cheese on the top.

Serve them freshly baked with butter and cheese, and maybe even a glass of cool cider on the side as there will be something left over in the bottle.

Your VegHog

Parsnip rolls

How would you like to start the day with warm freshly baked parsnip rolls during the holiday season? These rolls are very easy to make and with that root vegetable addition they have such a seasonal feel about them. I wanted to try something else after having made carrot rolls for so many times, and I was actually quite happy with the result, as parsnip also goes very well indeed in spelt rolls.

This recipe makes about 6 rolls.

1 parsnip

1 tbsp dry yeast

150 ml lukewarm water

6 dl spelt flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp olive oil

Poppy seeds

Peel and grate the parsnip.

Mix the dry yeast with the lukewarm water and add the grated parsnip to it.

Mix the dry ingredients: spelt flour, salt and sugar.

Then add the parsnip mix to the flour and knead.

Pour the olive oil on the top and knead a bit longer.

Let the dough rise in a warm place for about one hour.

Shape rolls from the dough and let them rest on a baking tray under a teatowel for further 30 minutes.

Brush the rolls with water and sprinkle poppy seeds on the top.

Bake them at 220C for about 15 minutes until they are fully baked.

Let them cool a bit and then enjoy with butter and/or cheese.

Your VegHog